Youtube's New Fix

nakedsoul

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I wouldn't be surprised if it has something to do with the "usage patterns". Think about it. Real viewers would have a specific usage pattern. These bots and boosting programs would create a usage pattern that would deviate from the normal pattern especially since these proxies are used by multiple people at the same time. It would be easy for Youtube to have an automated system that recognizes anomalies and then flags the video.

Maybe not...
 
I saw a nice custom add-on for one of the big botnet packages the other day.
Gets each persons YT login, and runs a script on each persons machine to access a list of YT videos. It would "watch" whatever, 100 or 300 videos on each persons computer as a background process using their own (probably decently aged) login information.

So if a few people got together, or one person with 200 unrelated videos and a nice chunk of cash to spare, and knows somebody who has a 100k+ host botnet, its quite possible to get some almost natural(to youtube) views. In essence, each infected host is a clean proxy, and uses that persons clean login details.
Its actually not terribly complicated for the botnet guys, but they don't work for peanuts.
 
The pattern is simple, more views at night and weekends according to country. Too many views in the day and weekdays simply means blackhat. If you are from youtube, please press the thanks button for me so that we know you are from youtube.
 
My observations:
Youtube track you:
1) When you play/download the video, see the url i get with Wm recorder:

http://v20.lscache5.googlevideo.com...a801&itag=34&sparams=id,expire,ip,ipbits,itag&ip=87.102.0.12&signature=C007A3EAFB2BFE30339681853E8A95CAAD6B7D

(sometimes i even see a &counter=1 at the end)

2) With the flash cookies (that u can remove / not allow) (see here


It seems youtube as changed his system so we can't reach the real URL (no bandwidth stealing) i think part of the solution consist on reverse engineer this but good luck...

Then there is the case of proxies but there is a chance with good proxies you can pass under the radar imo
 
Another thing which I think they have cracked down on today is retrieving a token from youtube now has to be requested and used from the same IP.

This was a big flaw in their previous system especially considering the tokens were valid for up to 25 mins and useable from unlimited IPs.

I think you will find that all the youtube video download scripts that used a mix of client side and server side will be useless.

Wait and see I guess.

Ash
 
It seems youtube as changed his system so we can't reach the real URL (no bandwidth stealing) i think part of the solution consist on reverse engineer this but good luck...

Which url are you trying to find that would be considered bandwidth stealing?
 
Very good information and responses guys (and gals)! I think most of you are right on target! Hopefully there will be a new method soon! Let's keep it up!

ashilicious - Are you talking about the Session Token or the gXSRF Token? When I viewed the source of a video I saw those two tokens. Upon refreshing I found out that the Session Token remains the same but the gXSRF Token changes. Know anything about this? I am going to packet spy a video in a little bit.

bongli - I definitely agree with the timing issue you mentioned. Thanks!

nakedsoul - You might actually be on to something. :)

Also, just as a caution, I would be careful using a botnet. Even if you are not running the botnet yourself, hijacked PCs are highly illegal and they will track you down for this (unless you live in Russia or something). I'm not so sure how serious it would be taken as far as YouTube goes, but just a warning. It's definitely a good idea, but if you are going to do it make sure you are setup completely anonymous.
 
The &t= token used in the get url link. If it is not requested and used from the same IP the video source will return a '403 Forbidden'.

This previously was not the case.
 
interestingly enough, the script on keepvid dot com seems to work, meaning i can play the vid within my own player, i don't know if it will last forever (unlikely imo) but surely enough time to generate some views.

Someone happen to know a good app where i can use a proxy list like TubeIncreaser but instead open my own html page ?
 
Today I released a video, sent an email out to a few thousand people to watch the video.

The views increased beyond the 200, and its updating in real time pretty much past the 200. Video jumped from 255 views to 259 views as I wrote this..

Not sure what that means, might give someone some ideas
 
I would guess YT will count a view in real time if the following conditions are met.

1. user has a YT account
2. not a duplicate mac address
3. unique IP (maybe, but aol users are behind proxies so they prob allow the 200 views per ip still)
4. IP is not from a known proxy or bot
5. some sort of cookie check

I'm just guessing, but those are prob some of the factors they take into consideration when counting views.
 
Also, AOL users are not the only ones behind proxies or that share a pool of dynamic IPs. Earthlink dialup, probably NetZero, and a lot of DSL services that I know of share a pool of dynamic IPs as well.
 
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